Before I went on vacation, I cleaned up my calendar.  I declined meetings organised by others that I wouldn’t be attending, and I deleted my own events that no longer applied.  This was mostly to remind others that I was on vacation, but also to ensure that my iPhone calendar only had stuff relevant to my vacation on it.

I missed one event, which is my team’s weekly meeting.  This led me to notice a not-entirely-unexpected display bug with the notifications on my iPhone.  The event on my calendar is in my home time zone (PST, GMT-8), and I was in another time zone (AEDT; GMT+11).  The event fired at the right time, adjusting for time zone.

The notification itself has an error in the display: it shows the time for the meeting as being “yesterday”.  Which it kinda is: the meeting is scheduled for Thursday at 4pm, but it is Friday at 9am in the time zone that I was in.  The notification system should be smart enough to tell me when the meeting is in my time zone.  I’m not necessarily near my phone with the notification sounds off, so I can’t tell just by glancing at the notification when the meeting is.  The notification looks like it’s firing a day after the event, but it’s actually firing at the right time.

Notifications are only useful if I know what they’re notifying me of and what action I should take.  By showing “yesterday” when an event is actually occurring now, I think that I’ve missed a meeting when I haven’t.